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McCain not natural born?

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  • McCain not natural born?



    So, at the time of McCain's birth in 1936, the law was all children of US citizens born "out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States" are to be natural born citizens. Since McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was within the jurisdiction of the US, and and for legal purposes unincorporated territories owned by the US are to be considered outside the US, John McCain isn't a natural born citizen. It wasn't until 1937 that a law was passed that made children of US citizens born in the Panama Canal Zone US citizens. But surely no American would think that someone shouldn't be allowed to serve as president because his father was serving overseas. The Senate agrees.

    The full article linked at the top of the post for those ofyou that are too lazy to make one click:

    In the most detailed examination yet of Senator John McCain’s eligibility to be president, a law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen.”

    The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over Mr. McCain’s eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make Mr. McCain a natural-born citizen.

    “It’s preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an advanced democracy,” Professor Chin said. “But this is the constitutional text that we have.”

    Several legal experts said that Professor Chin’s analysis was careful and plausible. But they added that nothing was very likely to follow from it.

    “No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there’s a constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside,” said Peter J. Spiro, an authority on the law of citizenship at Temple University.

    Mr. McCain has dismissed any suggestion that he does not meet the citizenship test.

    In April, the Senate approved a nonbinding resolution declaring that Mr. McCain is eligible to be president. Its sponsors said the nation’s founders would have never intended to deny the presidency to the offspring of military personnel stationed out of the country.

    A lawsuit challenging Mr. McCain’s qualifications is pending in the Federal District Court in Concord, N.H.

    There are, Professor Chin argued in his analysis, only two ways to become a natural-born citizen. One, specified in the Constitution, is to be born in the United States. The other way is to be covered by a law enacted by Congress at the time of one’s birth.

    Professor Chin wrote that simply being born in the Canal Zone did not satisfy the 14th Amendment, which says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

    A series of early-20th-century decisions known as the Insular Cases, he wrote, ruled that unincorporated territories acquired by the United States were not part of the nation for constitutional purposes. The Insular Cases did not directly address the Canal Zone. But the zone was generally considered an unincorporated territory before it was returned to Panama in 1999, and some people born in the Canal Zone when it was under American jurisdiction have been deported from the United States or convicted of being here illegally.

    The second way Mr. McCain could have, and ultimately did, become a citizen was by statute, Professor Chin wrote. In Rogers v. Bellei in 1971, the Supreme Court said Congress had broad authority to decide whether and when children born to American citizens abroad are citizens.

    At the time of Mr. McCain’s birth, the relevant law granted citizenship to any child born to an American parent “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States.” Professor Chin said the term “limits and jurisdiction” left a crucial gap. The Canal Zone was beyond the limits of the United States but not beyond its jurisdiction, and thus the law did not apply to Mr. McCain.

    In 1937, Congress addressed the problem, enacting a law that granted citizenship to people born in the Canal Zone after 1904. That made Mr. McCain a citizen, but not one who was naturally born, Professor Chin said, because the citizenship was conferred after his birth.

    In his paper and in an interview, Professor Chin, a registered Democrat, said he had no political motive in raising the question.

    In March, Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard and an adviser to Senator Barack Obama, prepared a memorandum on these questions with Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general in the Bush administration. The memorandum concluded that Mr. McCain is a natural-born citizen based on the place of his birth, the citizenship of his parents and their service to the country.

    In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Olson, whose firm represents Mr. McCain in the New Hampshire lawsuit, said Congress could not have intended to leave the gap described by Professor Chin. The 1937 law, Mr. Olson said, was not a fix but a way to clarify what Congress had meant all along.

    Professor Tribe agreed. Reading the “limits and jurisdiction” clause as Professor Chin does, Professor Tribe said, “is to attribute a crazy design to Congress” that “would create an irrational gap.”

    Brian Rogers, a McCain spokesman, said the campaign concurred and was confident Mr. McCain is eligible to serve.

    In the motion to dismiss the New Hampshire suit, Mr. McCain’s lawyers said an individual citizen like the plaintiff, a Nashua man named Fred Hollander, lacks proof of direct injury and cannot sue.

    Daniel P. Tokaji, an election law expert at Ohio State University, agreed. “It is awfully unlikely that a federal court would say that an individual voter has standing,” he said. “It is questionable whether anyone would have standing to raise that claim. You’d have to think a federal court would look for every possible way to avoid deciding the issue.”


    So are there anyone here that thinks being born to a US soldier overseas should stop someone from being allowed to run for president? Or more specifically, is their anyone (by anyone, I mean a lefty nutjob that is clearly too insecure about their canidate) here that thinks that thinks McCain shouldn't be considered a natural born citizen?
    30
    Yes - McCain Supporter
    10.00%
    3
    No - McCain Supporter
    10.00%
    3
    Yes - Obama Supporter
    0.00%
    0
    No - Obama Supporter
    20.00%
    6
    Yes - Other
    13.33%
    4
    No - Other
    16.67%
    5
    :ana:
    30.00%
    9
    Last edited by Will9; July 11, 2008, 16:44.
    USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
    The video may avatar is from

  • #2
    This is quite the non-story.
    I'm consitently stupid- Japher
    I think that opinion in the United States is decidedly different from the rest of the world because we have a free press -- by free, I mean a virgorously presented right wing point of view on the air and available to all.- Ned

    Comment


    • #3
      Jeez...I thought this was about him being a product of an evil lab experiment
      "post reported"Winston, on the barricades for freedom of speech
      "I don't like laws all over the world. Doesn't mean I am going to do anything but post about it."Jon Miller

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      • #4
        You should be ridiculed endlessly for posting this Will.
        "

        Comment


        • #5
          Kinda hard to imagine McCane as a baby.

          Comment


          • #6
            Are his mother some evil foreigner (maybe even french ) or are children after two american citizens borne outside america not considered an american citizen ?
            With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

            Steven Weinberg

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            • #7
              I hereby award this: Thrilling thread of the day.
              "The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
              Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "

              Comment


              • #8
                Eh, a country, that is build on emigrants, and doesn't let one run for the highest office? The idea is silly. I hope you'll do something about it, someday.

                Oh, and none of the Founding Fathers, who'm you hold in such a high regard, were natural born americans. I'd wager most of them were infact natural born brits. Same for some of your early presidents. Van Buren seems to be the first to have actually been born in the US, and William Harrison, who held the office after him, was actually not.
                Last edited by Tattila the Hun; July 11, 2008, 17:11.
                I've allways wanted to play "Russ Meyer's Civilization"

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Julian Delphiki
                  Kinda hard to imagine McCane as a baby.
                  John McCain III in the arms of JohnMcCain Sr., on the right, and on the left is John McCain Jr.

                  USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
                  The video may avatar is from

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    All it shows is he's always been a little ahead of the times.

                    The guy was even born pre-emptively.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Will


                      John McCain III in the arms of JohnMcCain Sr., on the right, and on the left is John McCain Jr.

                      That seems like one nosy family.

                      Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
                      Eh, a country, that is build on emigrants, and doesn't let one run for the highest office? The idea is silly. I hope you'll do something about it, someday.

                      Oh, and none of the Founding Fathers, who'm you hold in such a high regard, were natural born americans. I'd wager most of them were infact natural born brits. Same for some of your early presidents. Van Buren seems to be the first to have actually been born in the US.


                      John Morton (1725 – April 1, 1777) was a farmer, surveyor, and jurist from the Province of Pennsylvania. As a delegate to the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, he provided the swing vote that allowed Pennsylvania to vote in favor of the United States Declaration of Independence.

                      His parents were John Morton and Mary Archer, who were of Swedish and Finnish ancestry.
                      Not sure if thats a good or a bad thing.

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                      • #12
                        Eh, I doubt they'd have just given up, had the vote gone sour.
                        I've allways wanted to play "Russ Meyer's Civilization"

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Yes, a service member's child is a citizen of the USA, assuming it's the American military member to which the child is born.

                          If we're going down this road, all kinds of doors open up to Obama.
                          Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
                          "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
                          He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

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                          • #14
                            Didn't we do a thread on this some months ago?
                            The cake is NOT a lie. It's so delicious and moist.

                            The Weighted Companion Cube is cheating on you, that slut.

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                            • #15
                              I always thought that Panama was considered a de facto part of the United States, like Puerto Rico, and Guam, and Alberta.
                              John Brown did nothing wrong.

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